windthread

the symbol of magic,  Real magic went across.   I look and think that it may not at all be artistically "correct",  but it is what it is for this Story.  How in the cold days that we call Winter,  it is" as if" and IS that an additional dimension of Sky appears,  how Sky becomes All there Is.  So for the sake of the story.

and then the pale light of Sun was begun

And i was hoping for some subtle way for this to go,  but,  it seems not…..

One of you kind and loving souls Out There in my Real World sent this.  Not wanting to tarnish Tay's ever growing reputation as Good Dog,  i didn't want to tell the truth.   It arrived on a day when evidently a substitute UPS driver was working who dropped the package over the fence onto the little bench there.  I had heard the toot toot of the truck horn but was on the phone and it was some moments later that i looked out to see

Turquoise

her standing over Turquoise

She had taken the bubble wrap envelope off….not neatly,  in shreds,  but miraculously, the book itself was saved.   

I'd hoped someone would email me,  wondering if i got it?  Nope.  So  here we have it.  

it IS    an extraordinary book.  And although i knew that she had died,  after reading some,  i looked her up,  Ellen Meloy,  and saw that she died i think two years after this book was published.   I don't know HOW she died,  or rather, from what,  all i've seen is that she died in her sleep.  She was 58 years old.   And somehow it makes the words i am reading all that more poignant.  They are so FULL of sensuality….the Sensing of things….the telling of the sensing….

and she is gone.

so i read it as if she is talking to me from wherever it is she has gone to,  to tell me what i need to Look  for,  how i need to look  and how so vitally important that  Looking is.

"….in the desert there is everything and there is nothing.  Stay curious.  Know where you are…your biological address.  Get to know your neighbors…plants, creatures,  who lives there,  who died there,  who is blessed, cursed.  What is absent or in danger or in need of your help.  Pay attention to weather,  to what breaks your heart,  to what lifts your heart.  Write it down."    Ok and Yes, Ellen.

 

SUN ~ SUN ~ SUN~  beauty FULL,  warm,  loving, energizing, SUN.   Just this much will hold me now for a while.   I walked through this day and imagined that  Flower Spirit to be Up There,  Far and Above, to be there and i imagined it as best i know how so when the Sky is grey,  i might still See it there and let it Carry me by it's Energy

Everything invisibly basted…just enough to hold place.  Now i will look for a day or so before i just go.  But it was really uhhh,  a release,  to stitch all morning,  letting my mind fall upon this Cloth,  become the same as this Cloth.  Nothing Else.  Just this.  and through the windows,  all around,  that SUN.  yes.   

and the Room,  the first time in some days was Bright and Warm and Expansive a View

AND I FORGOT.

Very soon,  i'm not sure how soon,  i need to find out,  Tenzen will need to stand still enough for the Vet to draw blood.    For the tests that Jan the Dog Trainer wants done before she "uses" him  with her does.  So i went into their yard today,  him and Nogal,  a pocket full of peanuts  (in the shell) and fed them one by one and they very easily come close and push to be sure to get their fair share.  I saw that i could easily?  drop a teather rope around his head.  So i want to do this as much and as long as i can before the Vet arrives.  They are instantly alert to Strangers and distrustful.  So, today.  I did what i can do to make it as ok for him as i can.   We'll see.

 

 

 

Again,  the morning dawned  bleak.  Vague.  like,  almost not.  It was so still, with almost a quality of emptiness.  The silence of it was so silent.    And I just sat and tried to understand  how it was making me feel.   The best i could come up with was that there was just Too Much of It.   And then i thought of Barometric Pressure.  Barometric Pressure.  and what IS barometric pressure?  I googled.  It is the weight of the air around us.  "The joints and other parts of our body are filled with fluid and this fluid responds to barometric pressure".      ……thinking…..the Brain is filled with fluid.   Maybe this is it.  Or maybe not.  But a day for Just Going. 

And i had thought about Just Going a lot yesterday.  The term comes from Jude Hill,  Spirit Cloth and it has her meaning and also so totally gave word to something i know very intimately,  have known, maybe for ever,  i so loved the term when i first read her using it.  But what Really?,  IS   Just Going?   And that made me think about the young Goat, whose name is Just Going.

She was born July 4th, 2012,  the last of Lucky Star's 3 kids.  The two large buck twins,  Los Dados, and then her.  She was so so small and frail.  She could not hold up her head.   They were the last of the 14 kids born and i sat there and looked at her and thought,  well….it would be too much to hope for all of them to make it.   The two little bucklings were already finding their teat.  Wobbling around after Lucky Star,  

was in some kind of post partum altered state.   So i got up and went into the house and sat.  After a couple hours, i went back Out.

 

 

and i thought…Just Going.  She is Just Going. 

By the time she got to where Lucky Star was,  in her quest for What She Really Didn't Know Yet,  Lucky Star would have moved somewhere else.   So she had to start again.  Just Going.  She had to just go.  and she did.

her on the Raft, a couple days later.

Today.  Her butt is the same size as her Mother's.

 

she is strong and snotty….one of the two most Feral.   I need to change that,  she and i need to Just Go in these next months.  No easy task.  

So….really,  What is Just Going?,  back to the original thought.   Maybe when you are at some Point.  Where things seem unclear.  When there are no known indicators.  When you need to go somewhere you have not been before.  or Forgot you have been there, because it looks all different.  But you want to Live,  to "fulfill that covenant",  if you can,  so

you just do the one single Next Thing.  That accomplished,  you do the next.  and so on.  ????????

 

Actually,  yesterday wasn't at all   "nothing",  it was a LOT.  So much so a Lot that all i could say was Nothing.  But there was this….i'd forgotten to put water in before i went off to the Old Cowboy's and it was all dried out.  Stiff.  Crusty.  but beauty full none the less.

this morning i added water

 

added just some Earth

 

this is a printout with drawing on it

and then i DID it.   The small figure  at the mercy of Winter Sky,  but "asking"  and so,  in a way, also Just Going.   I stitched the figure first.  Before any other stitches at all.   it must Mean something?

at the very Last of the day,  the Grey broke and blue.  Blue was there.  I knew it was,  but i really needed to SEE it.  and so.  Time to just go.

Nothing to say tonight.  I had a loooong conversation with the GrandDaughter on her drive from Chico California to Sacremento,  to her class.  It was trans generational.  It was Extraordinary.  It was what i have no words for.   We talked about the concept of Covenant.  Covenant between Souls.  and it was so much that i don't even want to try to say anything at all about it here,  but rather hold it….hold Her close in my Heart.

 

"I would like to continue from last night's talk.  We have discussed the three levels of the teacher relationship in terms of the student's development.  Tonight i would like to talk about whom we're relating to in the sadhana.  We have a sense of relating with somewhat ideal, ethereal being, who are known as Dorje Trolo or Karma Pakshi, people who have already existed, who have lived and died in the past.  How can we relate those people to the present situation?  And how is that different from worshipping Jesus Christ, for that matter?

That is an interesting question.  Dorje Trolo or Karma Pakshi represent the notion of the embodiment of the siddhas.  Siddha is a sanskrit word which refers to those who are able to overpower the phenomenal world in their own enlightened way.  A sidda is a crazy wisdom person.  Crazy Wisdom in Tibetan is yeshe cholwa.  Yeshe means "wisdom" and cholwa, literally, is "gone wild".  The closest translation for cholwas that we could come up with is "crazy" which creates some further understanding.  In this case "crazy" goes along with "wisdom"; the two words work together well.  So it is craziness gone wise rather than wisdom gone crazy.  So from that point of view, craziness is related with wisdom.

The notion of wisdom here is very touchy, and we will have to get into the technical aspect of the whole thing.  Wisdom is jnana in Sanskrit and yeshe in Tibetan.  Yeshe refers to perception or to enlightment, which exists eternally.  Ye means "primordial";  she means "knowing"  knowing primordially,  knowing already.  The idea is that you haven't suddenly acquired knowledge.  It isn't that somebody has just told you something.  Knowledge already exists; it is here and we are beginning to tune into that situation.  Such a thing actually does exist already.  Wisdom isn't purely manufactured by scholars and scientists and books.

So the notion of enlightenment is the same as that of wisdom.  Being a buddha is not so much being a great scholar who knows all about everything.  Being a buddha, being enlightened, is actually being able to tune our mind into that state of being which already exists, which is already liberated.  Our only problem is that we are covered over with all kinds of hiding places and shadows and venetian blinds…whatever we have covering us.  We are always trying to cover up.

As a result, we are known as confused people,  which is an insult.  We are not all that confused, studpid, and bewildered.  We have possibilities…more than possibilities.  We actually inherit fundamental wakefulness..all the time.  So that is the notion of enlightenment as well as the notion of yeshe.  We are eternally awake…primordially awake, cognitively open and insightful.  That's the notion of wisdom.

The notion of "crazy" is connected with individual situations.  When wisdom has been completely and thoroughly achieved, then it has to relate with something.  I has to relate with its own radiation, its own light.  When light begins to shine, it reflects on things.  That is how we know whether it is bright or dim.  Therefore, when light is very brilliant, when it reflects on things properly and fully, we know that there is some kind of communication taking place.   That communication is expressed by the intensity of that wisdom light shining through .  That communication is traditionally known as buddha-activity or compassion.

Compassion is not so much feeling sorry for somebody,  feeling that you are in a better place and somebody is in a worse place.  Compassion is not having any hesitation to reflect your light on things.  That reflection is an automatic and natural process, an organic process.  Since light has no hesitation, no inhibition about reflecting on things, it does not discriminate whether to reflect on a pile of shit or on a pile of rock or on a pile of diamonds.  It reflects on everything it faces.  That nondiscriminating reflection is precisely the nature of the relationship between student and teacher.  When the student is facing in the right direction,  then the guru's light is reflected on him.  And when he is unreceptive, when  he is full of dark corners,  the teacher's light is not fully reflected on him.  That light does not particularly try to fight its way into dark corners.

So that nonhesitating light reflects choicelessly all the time;  it shines brilliantly and constantly on things.  Craziness means not discriminating and being without cowardice or paranoia.  "Should I shine on this object, even though this other object is facing towards me?"…not at all.  Whoever needs to be subjugated is subjugated, whoever needs to be …..how does the line go?  Does anybody remember that line?  Maybe someone can read it out of the sadhana.

STUDENT:  I think it's "he subdues what needs to be subdued,  he destroys what needs to be destroyed, and he cares for whatever needs his care."

VIDYADHARA:  Thank you.  So the definition of crazy wisdom is that whatever is needed will be done.  What is not needed is not done."

 

There's a lot more. You can look at shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=131

all this and a herd name for Goats.

so this has been good.  These last two posts that i had some trepidation about.  But i find when i feel like i am not being Clear about my life,  BOTH to myself and to others,  it is as if there is something stuck in the Way of things,  something hidden, really,  and i find that very uncomfortable any more.  Put it all Out There.  Let the "air things" dance around it,  let it all receive the same Sun and Moon that i do.  Let it "air out".   Let it take its equal place within the Whole.  And it's now feeling like that.  Enough Said.  It's here.  documented.  so ok.   We can just go now.

When i got home today from the Work Awa y,  i was met by this.   All over in the Way Back,  those birds.  Not just in the old dead Russian Olive,  but Everywhere.  They were all over the roof too,  the  sounds of their feet ticking away up there,  going to and fro and back and around.  They were all over at the back gate too,  lining the fence,  around the rim of the Goats water tub,  drinking their water and TALKING.  So much TALKING.    I have never seen this before.

for a moment it seemed like all i do is bring in wood.   But then,  i let that thought go and brought in more wood.  Wood keeps me warm.

this is as far as the basket of clean laundry got.  Just inside the door,  atop Tay's crate.  It probably will stay there till Wednesday.  Tay doesn't mind,  thinks it's interesting to have things overhead although she rarely uses her crate anymore.

and i FORCED self to apply yet one more coat of primer on the last window.  one side of it anyway,  and it's drying now.  Tomorrow the primer on the Other side and then,  the coat of blue.   and then it was time to feed myself and the dogs and yes,  bring in more wood …the day being over still so soon and i was thinking that maybe i will NEVER make another cloth again.   but then  suddenly

i went over to the Wall and re arranged.  re pinned.  A Flower Spirit in January!   A Being!  and it felt really really GOOD.  January.  soon the seed catalogs will arrive.  January.

 

 

I thought about it all day,  and realize that the comment about my daughter's silence yesterday might be considered  "going too far",  and  i spent time looking at that this morning because we woke here to FOG that stayed till after Noon.   So i held the clay ball and changed it's shape many times,  felt it Warm in my hands.   Let the clay  "take me in".   If you have a sense of what these Goats are to me,  then you might be able to imagine what they were to her.   If you knew all the details of her life,  you might know even more about what they were to her.   Things collapsed for her and that happens in people's lives.   And her way during times like this is Silence.  It would not be my way,  but i respect and honor that it is hers.   So i just wait.  When it's time, things will change.  And i went out when Sun broke through to find Snowbunny alone in the middle yard.  Lying all like a Goat Goddess on the picnic table.  So i sat with her a while.   And we remembered together.

Snowbunny and Daffodil were her first Goats.   It was because of them she began to have Goat Dreams.   Not long into it,   there were new born kids and  one night some neighborhood dogs jumped the 6ft fence and came in to steal a newborn.   It's a long story but Snowbunny stood her ground and made every effort to protect them all,  in the process being severely ripped.  Her jaw, down her chest.  The vet advised to put her down but daughter did not.  She slept on the floor of her laundry room with the door open so she could Hear.  She slept with Snowbunny and cleaned her wounds,  irrigating the gash in her face.  She healed Snowbunny.  Today,  when i run my fingers over her,  i can feel the scars.  and Today,  i felt for those scars…..and yes.  they remain.

Trauma is trauma and we all have our ways of working through,  of Just Going.  What works for one does not necessarily work for the other.  I have Great Faith in the Love between my daughter and me and i will just sit tight here.  Waiting for a sign.  And in the meantime,   these Goats.

Alz B's son Bill who i buy grass hay from wanted me to take some bales of SunFlower to see if the Goats would eat it.  It also has "some milkweed, but probably not much" in it.  So rather than  be argumentive,  i took it.  It was free.  and today i hauled the bales and layed it down as mulch on the far side of the Good Compost Raised Bed.  Around the two Native Plum.   One of which i knew was ok but the other unsure.  So today i found my courage and scratched the bark of the Ify One and yes.  There is green.  It lives.   So this mulching in this area will maybe prevent weeds,  or as many weeds,  and will also hold moisture.  Being the rough wild Sunflower stalks,  will also allow plenty of oxygen in to the earth beneath.   It's a strip where Tay runs and so her running will also break it down.  

and i saw this on the ground.  I was electrified!  …..a pupae?????????????????…… of what and i reached down to pick it up and see that it was some kind of a very light beautiful piece of plastic.  So, no pupae,  but for a moment it Was and it was WonderFull,  that moment

 

 

 

 

it feels like some kind of Spell   that has cast itself on these moments in time for purpose i don't know.  But it is a Benevolent Spell  and  IS for purpose,  just that i don't know.  So i go.

 

This is my daughter's notebook.  It's her GOATbook,  her records for Crazy Wisdom,  the name she chose for her Herd name.  Crazy Wisdom .   All her goats are registered and in this notebook…their breeding lineage.   It's complex.  I had to go through it all this morning to try to make concise the information that Jan,  the dog  trainer,  needed to decide if she wants to "use" one of the bucks here to breed with her goats.   It's mind boggling.   but it is also the family tree of all the Goats that live here with me now.  All the Goats that i have Inherited.  My Inheritance,  from my daughter.  and i WILL say this here,  today,  because of the Spell,  that my daughter hasn't had any contact with me in maybe a year and a half?  And that i have no idea WHY.  None.  Zip.    so that was important to say because it would fill in a gap that otherwise wouldn't make sense.  

so i make notes for Jan because when she is Here,  i tend to get lost in the conversation and she is a pragmatic woman and i want to make sense when talking with her.  it took all morning.  And then she came.   Once again,  as we have a few times before,  we stood in front of where all the doe Goats were.   They stood.  Looking back as we looked at them.  All the time we talked they just stood, looking at us as we talked,  me telling her who was who as in who was daughter of who and who was from where etc.    It felt interesting,  this,  because they held eyecontact.  What they understood, i cannot possibly know,  but they behaved as if they understood it was a moment of Importance.  There are too many details to speak of here but she noted that i am 2 less than last she was here and with that oh so faintest smile she can get said,  "well, Good.  progress".  and she said "They're really nice".     And at a point,  i felt compelled to tell her,  as is how i Am,  that i had had a sort of an Epiphany the other day and that…and i said  "Oh I know what you will think",  and then said immediately " well, but it doesn't matter what you think" 

Which surprised me…that i said that

and i told her that as of now,  we will just go.  Me and them.  That i am letting go of thinking what i "Need to do" and am just going to leave it as it is.  We are Here.  period.  and i watch that very faint smile she gets that is almost  against her will and she said, "well,  that's one way to do it".   Bless Her.

moving on to the bucks  who presented their stinky selves with good Cheer and she went home with her lineage info to think and will let me know.   THIS took half the day.  and left me in some kind of vague place,  that i have no idea how to describe.

Before all this i had gone to the Post Office because i had that little notice in my mailbox that a package had arrived

 

from Tina who has recently walked so surely and well into this space…some cloths she has dyed with probably procion and some with tea and tamarack  and this oh SO BeautyFULL  felted pocket

and because i had the pomegranate stewing in the pot i ripped a piece off and dropped it in and then took it OutSide to rest moments in the walnut vat…Taking Libertys,  Tina,  but i think you won't mind

and here it is

 

 

 

how so totally Glowy she is in the late day SUN

 

BEAUTY   FULL brave Snowbunny who started it All

Onday.  

 

 

 

It was a What If day.   A day that belonged to it's Self.  A solid day.  A day of Basic Goodness.  A day that had it's own Just Going and  ok. 

It began with a loooong phone conversation with Kelly who has Magic and Barbara,  about so much, that i can't even think to put it here but i loved listening to her,  her discoveries, her Dreams,  her Awareness of where she is in the moment and where she would want the moment to take her and her family.  and it ended with an agreement about a buck   coming to her Place for Barbara and Magic.  Soon.

Then,  it tripped into a call from neighbor Margie who thought she was dying and wanted me to take her to the ER and i thought, listening, that she has this viscious flu and i didn't want to get near her so i convinced her to call the Ambulance which she did and i sighed relief but then got a call a while later from her at the ER,  could i come for her.  Yes.  she did have the flu and yes…there was no other answer but yes,  i will come for you,  so i  took a big swig of Fire Cider from Taking Root Herbals in Vermont that Cynthia sent me…the label  of which advises to take take when traveling anywhere germy or at the first sign of a cold,  repeating often….. this would be germy….and i arrived at the ER and there was a staff person speaking to a person who was Blind and milling about and then others were there in the waiting room obviously feeling wretched,  so i asked the staff person to give Margie a mask so she might not infect me with her germs and he laughed and said ok and there came dear neighbor Margie with a surgical mask in place and i apologized to her but reminded her that i am On My Own with my small world here and she laughed and it was all ok.  And well,   we'll see.

Some More taping of the window panes on the final side of the Window until the Granddaughter called and yet another long conversation that also involved taking some kind of personality inventory that proved what we already knew that we are very much alike but a conversation that left me feeling the very natural and  easy connection with her

 

and between all this off and on and in between,  these pieces of cloth that really "don't go" but then really DO?   in a What If  way?

I brought in the copper pot and cleaned it of the sludge of summer

 

 

 

the pomegranate in the copper pot

and more phone…Nurse Cindy,  who is responsible for a woman Ceil who is on the Alz Unit there at the Old Folks home that i agreed to be Back UP for,  in case of Crash for Nurse Cindy 

What IS all this?  

 

 

 

It is true that i have been preoccupied by  ~ "What to do about the Goats"~  for a while now.  And it's Winter.  When i am weakest.  Most suseptible to things that are Hard for me.    And it's true that after this Winter,  the Third Spring will arrive.   The Third Spring for me and Them here.  And i have been preoccupied by trying to understand what is Right about them.   For them, actually.  OR maybe it is really For     me?,    in my need to think i am doing what is Right for Them?    All this is tangled.  It is hard to see.   So i have kept looking.    Everybody can weigh in and i listen and hold all the thoughts and opinions and hold them and sort through them and try to See it All and it's remained tangled.   It's some kind of absolute Truth that i am looking for?,   and i wonder if there IS an Absolute Truth?,  maybe not,  maybe just the small and particular truth that is happening here as we,  me and Them,  just go?

Anyway,  as i have been,  i woke this morning to sit in the Morning Chair and do the TayMorningThing,  where she presses herself into me/against me and i move my hand on her body in all manner of ways and my mind is Repeating pretty much the Same Same Same thoughts and getting No Where, but going in a Circle that has become, really, blurred.   And i think that i am so Tired of this.   So tired of the circular thinking but i don't know how to change it and ….and…..and…and i do what i do,  write this down on a piece of paper that normally i throw out after a small accumulation, but for whatever reason, yesterday i went and got an old manila folder and put all the January Morning Thoughts in it,  without looking at them,  but stuffed them in there and out of the blue,  there was a line of thinking that was different and i can't really detail that because it's not just about me,  but Others,  and so not for me to put here,  but a line of thinking that said….What IF?….and  very Suddenly,  there was that thing that i have written about before,  that Felt Sense and as i sat with that What If and the Felt Sense of it there was this HUGE RELEASE.  Yes.   Yes. and Yes.   And i understood that Me and the Goats is so much more than Me and the Goats and i could let it unfold as it needs to.  That i do NOT need to make a DECISION,  that i can wait.      Wait.    wait.   I can let it be what it is,  All that it is.  There is No Need to DO something.  I can just go.   I can TRUST Just Going.  

 

 

 

 

and these might look at first to be all the Same but they are not.  There is subtle and Important difference of these BIRDS that had gathered and begun their SOUNDING on this Dead Russian Olive Tree that  everyone asks me how come i don't cut down.  It's been dead for a long time.  Cut it down.  But i always kind of feebly say,  well, because the Birds still Use it.  And this morning,  as i was Released,  they were suddenly THERE with all their Speaking,  Loud and So Much they had to say and i listened and was freed into their speech,  into what it is they Say

and i worked on the Windows,  making good progress

and took time out to just look at cloth…pin it up and look

 

 

I have no idea where i will go next with Cloth.   but….Somewhere.

I can say this today as total solid truth that this Way… of Focusing,   Eugene T Gendlin  that i first found in 1979…so long ago…. is Real.   I say that because today it came through for me without my even asking or trying,  it just came.   Knowing by Felt Sense.  and i realized what it was , Recognized it.   And it's quite and very Beauty FULL.